Talk:Ardent Censer/@comment-8468980-20140607063934/@comment-5955640-20140609074602
No one plays Warwick as a support. The point was that buffs are combined all the time and it's not a problem. It's very normal and standard procedere and the best part is there are just as many debuffs as there are buffs to apply. It's just an AS boost. It's not a high Armor aura, not a duel damage buff. It just makes the AS higher. by 25%. Lets be frank. AS is only useful on champions who benefit from high AS. You might think "That's every marksman surely." But it's not. "More damage per second" is not always "more shots per second." To finely have this conversation down pat lets talk about a select few champions who have various strengths when fighting. All of them can buy AS but how much and too what degree does it benefit them? We will talk about Ashe, Ezreal, Corki, Caitlyn, and Vayne. Who have 0.658, 0.625, 0.625, 0.658 AS respectively at first. For the purposes of control lets pretend that there are no other AS boosts in runes and masteries and that all of these marksmans refused to buy an AS item and stayed in lane with a Doran's (which won't be calculated for this experiment and is just there for illustration) until level six yet magically all the supports went back and instead of buying wards or potions or even a starting item they held onto the gold to just buy this item the Ardent Censer and with their spells they apply the buff onto the marksman who is at level six. There AS at level six would be 0.898, 0.793, 0.763, 0.865, 0.844. Respectively. The Ardent Censer adds 25% to each of those numbers temporarly, putting them at around; 1.148, 1.043, 1.013, 1.115, 1.094 respectively. So you're thinking to yourself. "At higher levels and with items this would be a great boost." Yes it would. But it's all relative. The AS all started at around the same levels but scaled differently overtime. With the AS boost they became even more different. Ezreal has the least amount of AS in any situation in this group. This is because he has his passive Rising Spell Force which gives him 10% on every successful offensive spell cast for up to a cap of five times. He progressively gains more DPS with the usage of his spells. The only one he can really use in a fight is Mystic Shot as Essence Flux and Arcane Shift have no AD ratios and while W can be used offensively, you'd be better off using Arcane shift to kite as you won't be doing any damage with those spells unless you went Hybrid or AP. If you land an Essence Flux you get even more AS! With Ardent Censer you generate a rather staggering AS bonus at an early level! There is a caveat though. Ezreal ONLY has AS boosts. He has no damage boosts, no percentage damage, He has to build AP to get other forms of damage out and two of his four spells only scale from AP, and he has the second weakest damage gain per level beating out Ashe only (in this group). He also has to land a spell or at least be able to cast one in order to charge the AS high enough to where he can out auto attack his opponent and make up for them more than likely having more damage than him. He's very item dependant in buying flat AD items and AD pen but without Cooldown reduction or extra mana he can run out of mana in sustained fights and he needs a sustained fight to get a full stack of Rising Spell force and the highest possible DPS to go with his kit which hopefully has great AD on it. Ardent Censer lets you get closer to the AS cap when chained with Ezreal's natural AS buffs BUT his damage is lower and it's tied to casting spells which will want mana and cooldown reduction which can be counterproductive to buying all the AD and AD pen you need. Ezreal is the best example here of AS stacking (Jinx has it a lot easier I might add) Technically it gets weaker down with some of the others or they need more than just AS. Ashe for example needs her Crit passive to be on hand as often as possible and as high as possible. Ashe's Focus builds on it's own and it's her only form of bonus damage. Ardent Censer has far less usefulness as opposed to a Zeal or a Phantom Dancer because it does not also award you with crit for her to build upon to make the passive stack faster. Her only offensive spell is Volley which builds from AD by a 100% so AD and AD pen is also on the menu. Not so much AS as it is Critical strike. While Ashe has decent Ratios, they don't serve her until she has the Focus up. And then the AS only services her for ONE SHOT. In early game it will still be out for around 25 seconds and with crit being something you'll have to really buy and it's Infinity Edge you'd be wanting most of all. Ardent Censer will serve you very little. Corki on the other hand will benefit from AS. But not just AS. His natural growth of AS is intentionally low and has no natural AS steriods which holds him back from blasting a target away with his passive and armor shred which puts a battle in his favor with only the purchase of AD. With Ardent Censer Corki can possibly win a fight assuming he also has a fairly decent amount of AD and has shredded the target of their armor. Corki can safely forego some AS items in favor of being constantly buffed with shields and heals so he can, well actually. Corki's auto attack harass isn't very safe even if he's getting heals and shield buffs. Usually you'd want to harass with Q and at level six you start harassing with R. So Ardent Censer only comes into play when Corki is in a do or die trade with the opponent or clinching the kill on a fleeing target. Other occasions he'd rather spam a spell safely and run away from anyone trying to close in on him. Caitlyn is different. With the greatest unmodified attack range in the game she benefits from having Ardent Censer on her as she both has an easy auto attack poke and her passive is charged from auto attacks. The passive which does bonus damage based on half of her current attack damage. This stack is doubled when in brush as well. Her AS scaling is all right. She has no AS steroids and she will have to build AS and AD. Ardent Censer will help her pretty fairly on most occasions and give her more strength to kite a target and kill them. This is why Nunu and Caitlyn was a comp that a lot of people loathed. You're gonna bring it back with this item I hope your happy Riot. And last but not least is Vayne. AS is almost better on Vayne than AD (almost!) this is due to her W which deals bonus true damage based on the opponents health ontop of a flat amount of damage. AS churns the true damage W faster. It's a second passive that never goes off cooldown or consumes mana. Her other abilities scale off AD and grant her bonus AD and mobility. She has no AS steriods but it's pretty much the only thing she needs to build. She circumvents armor naturally without drawbacks, critically damage is painfully uneeded (although it's not counterproductive to buy it). and AD is always good. She would win most of her fights and dominate her lane very feircely with Ardent Censer placed on her. So lets double back and see what we learned here. Ardent Censer can give you a great boost in AS but in order for it to be exploited to it's full extent it requires: The marksman to have great AD ratios or easy access to AD steroids, To use spells as only as utility to boost damage and not be a main form of harass or attack, and it has to be safe to use in a fight with an enemy holding the line in either a team deadlock or the laning phase. You will get a few champs that will like this alot but it's not that great and lest we forget. AS does not climb infinitely. It stops at 2.50. Hard caps. No more AS. Any marksman that needs AS this badly that this would be critical. Is building more than enough AS on their own. It would only be useful if it was rushed for the laning phase at the cost of everything else your support should have to support you. Once it gets around mid to late game a marksman should have the AS they need and would benefit more from damage or whatever the enemy is building than more AS which always scales from your AD and critical strike/critical damage.